Las Vegas in 2026 by the Numbers: Fewer Visitors Than 2019, the Highest Gaming Win Ever, and a Strip Room That Got 10 Percent Cheaper in September
Visitation fell for thirteen straight months through January 2026 and has been flat since. Gaming win set a fiscal-year record anyway. The two facts are the same story: fewer people are coming, and the ones who come are the ones the casinos wanted.
Published 2026-11-09.
Las Vegas drew 3,097,200 visitors in September 2026, which the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported as a 0.2 percent increase on September 2025. Through nine months the city is at 28,886,300, down 0.1 percent, and on pace for a year around 38.5 million, roughly where 2025 finished and about four million short of the 42.5 million record set in 2019.
In the same month, Nevada casinos won $1,282,542,554 from their customers, and the fiscal year that ended in June 2026 produced the largest gaming win in the state's history, $16.05 billion. Fewer people, more money. Every other number below is a footnote to that pair.
2025 was the first down year since the pandemic: 38.5 million visitors, off 7.5 percent, with declines in all twelve months and a thirteenth in January 2026. 2026 has been flat, held up by conventions, which are up 9.6 percent through September while leisure travel keeps slipping. Rooms are finally cheaper: Strip ADR was $184.63 in September, down 10.6 percent, and occupancy 80.1 percent. Gaming win keeps rising, 1.7 percent so far this fiscal year, because the people still coming spend more. Canada is down 17 percent on the year and about 30 percent on 2019. For a player the practical changes are the $2,000 W-2G threshold, a Caesars sale that is not yet closed, and a fall sale that was the clearest sign yet that the resorts have noticed.
The visitors: a down year, then a flat one
The LVCVA's revised year-end figures for 2025: 38,545,700 visitors, down 7.5 percent from 41,676,300 in 2024. Every month of 2025 was below the same month of 2024, from a 1.2 percent dip in January to a 12 percent fall in July, and December's 9.2 percent decline was the twelfth in a row. January 2026 made it thirteen, at 3,269,100 visitors and down 2.2 percent. February broke the run with a 1.6 percent gain, and the months since have alternated: up in March, May and July, down in April, June and August, and the 0.2 percent gain in September that the LVCVA headlined as "continued resilience."
Resilience is the right word for one segment. Convention attendance was 4,968,200 through September, up 9.6 percent, after a flat 2025 at 5,988,200. Steve Hill, the LVCVA's chief executive, told a panel in September that "we are still gradually losing leisure travelers," and that "right now our convention attendance is so strong that it is more than overcoming that number." The LVCVA's own data in that discussion put visitation among 21-to-29-year-olds down more than 10 percent since 2022, and 75 percent of 2025 visitors in households earning $100,000 or more.
Harry Reid airport tells the harder version. Passengers were 54,988,547 in 2025, down 5.9 percent, and 38,429,946 through September 2026, down another 7.3 percent, with September alone off 8.4 percent. The drive-in market has filled part of the gap: traffic on I-15 at the California line was up 3.5 percent in September and 5.8 percent for the year.
The international piece, which is mostly Canada
The LVCVA's preliminary estimate of 2025 international visitation, dated April 20, 2026, puts the total at 4,726,500, down 4.8 percent on 2024 and 16.4 percent below 2019. Canada, the largest source, fell from 1,448,700 to 1,196,300, down 17.4 percent in a year and 19.2 percent on 2019, and still a quarter of all international visitors. Mexico was flat at 1,187,400. The United Kingdom was off 1.4 percent at 521,700, and nearly 30 percent below its 2019 level.
Hill said in September that Canadian visitation was running about 30 percent below 2019, which suggests 2026 is worse than 2025. The LVCVA has hired a Toronto marketing firm; reports in March put the contract at up to $6 million over five years, a figure we could not confirm from the board's own documents.
Rooms: the correction has arrived
Las Vegas hotel rooms were more expensive in 2024 than they had ever been, at an average daily rate of $193.16 and 83.6 percent occupancy. In 2025 the rate fell 4.5 percent to $184.43 and occupancy fell 3.3 points to 80.3 percent. 2026 started the other way, with ADR of $199.73 in January and $209.46 in May, and then the summer collapsed it: $156.35 in June, $157.45 in July, $150.32 in August, when occupancy hit a 2026 low of 74.1 percent.
September's numbers are the ones to book around. Citywide ADR was $178.63, down 6.3 percent on the year; the Strip's was $184.63, down 10.6 percent, with Strip occupancy at 80.1 percent and revenue per available room off 11.9 percent. Downtown was cheaper and emptier, with a $95.94 rate and 62 percent occupancy, down 5.4 points. Weekends still fill, at 89.8 percent, and midweek does not, at 73.1 percent, which is the oldest arbitrage in the city and is widening again.
The resorts have responded in two ways that pull against each other. Resort fees went up: a tracker we rely on counted 20 hotels at $55 a night in early 2026, including Aria, Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Wynn, Encore, Venetian, Palazzo, Fontainebleau and Resorts World, with the citywide average up 8 percent to about $43. Parking stayed at $20 to $25 for self-parking at MGM and Caesars properties and $40 to $50 for valet. Then the LVCVA ran its second "Vegas 5-Day Sale" from September 22 to 26 with more than 180 offers, including half-price rooms at MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay and Luxor, up to 60 percent off plus a $50 credit at Flamingo, Harrah's, Horseshoe and the LINQ, and a $400 all-in package at Circa. A destination that discounts its rooms citywide for a week in September is a destination that has read its own occupancy report. Our no-resort-fee list is where the fee question ends up.
Gaming win: a record on fewer bodies
The Nevada Gaming Control Board's fiscal year runs July to June. Fiscal 2026 closed with statewide win of $16,047,446,577, up 2.59 percent, and Strip win of $8,953,138,642, up 1.96 percent, both records. Calendar 2025 was flatter: statewide up 1.2 percent, the Strip up 0.3 percent at $8.82 billion, Downtown up 2.1 percent and the Boulder Strip up 3.8 percent, with December's $827.7 million on the Strip down 6.1 percent on a bad baccarat month.
The first quarter of fiscal 2027, July through September 2026, is up 1.67 percent statewide at $3.93 billion and 1.7 percent on the Strip at $2.15 billion. September itself was flat, down 0.05 percent, with the Strip up 0.82 percent at $693.5 million, Downtown down 7.45 percent at $82.6 million and Laughlin down 16.8 percent. A Citizens analyst called the Strip result "slightly below our expectations," with mass-market table revenue down 5 percent. Statewide slot win rose 1.26 percent to $948.9 million and table win fell 3.61 percent to $333.7 million, per the detailed figures reported by the Review-Journal, which we could not read directly.
The gap between visitor counts and gaming win is the whole 2026 story. Thirteen months of fewer people produced a record year of win because the visitors who stopped coming were the ones who gambled least and the hotels replaced them with convention delegates and higher-income leisure guests. The Nevada Gaming Abstract for fiscal 2025, released in June, shows the cost of that: Strip casinos' combined net income fell 81 percent to $154 million on total revenue of $21.08 billion, because the rooms, food and shows that carry the expenses did not keep pace. The casinos are winning more at the tables and making less as businesses.
What changed for a player in 2026
The tax change is the biggest, and it is federal rather than local. From January 1, 2026 a slot win needs to reach $2,000 rather than $1,200 before the machine locks up and a W-2G is written, which is the first change to that line since 1977; our W-2G post has the details, and our loss deduction post has the less welcome half of the same law.
Caesars is being sold. Tilman Fertitta's company agreed on May 28, 2026 to buy Caesars Entertainment for $31 a share, about $17.6 billion including $11.9 billion of debt. Shareholders approved it on September 22 by 133.3 million shares to 4.3 million, the Federal Trade Commission issued a second request on September 14, and the agreement carries a ticking fee if the deal has not closed by June 26, 2027. Nothing changes at a Caesars table until it closes, and Caesars Rewards is meanwhile adding an invitation-only top tier called Olympus at 300,000 tier credits from January 2027. Our Caesars vs MGM Rewards comparison stands until the new owner says otherwise.
On the Strip itself, The Cromwell reopened as The Vanderpump Hotel on June 11 without closing its casino, which we covered in our Vanderpump post; the Hard Rock guitar tower on the old Mirage site topped out on May 1 with an opening now described as late 2027 or early 2028, which is our Hard Rock Las Vegas post; and the Athletics' 33,000-seat ballpark on the Tropicana site is due in 2028. The Formula 1 race runs on Saturday, November 21, with a contract extended in June to 2037. The LVCVA plans to take the monorail down and run Boring Company tunnels on its route, on a timeline measured in years.
Blackjack has not improved. The most recent survey we trust, from May 2026, counts 3-to-2 games on the center Strip starting at $25 or $50 and 6-to-5 shoe games at 27 Strip casinos, with Circus Circus having dropped 3-to-2 entirely. Our Strip ranking and Strip overview are where that argument lives.
The city's own officials are no longer pretending the slump is weather. A $26 minibar bottle of water at Aria became the symbol of a year of complaints, and a sale week in September was the answer. For a player, 2026 is the first year since 2021 in which a Strip room is cheaper than it was the year before and the casino behind it is winning more than ever. Those two facts do not point the same way, and the midweek rate is where they meet.
Topics
- las-vegas
- nevada
- strip
- industry
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